Ward swallowed, closing his eyes with satisfaction. “You trying to spoil a brother.”
“Maybe.”
He opened his eyes. “You bring me over to these hotels cause of the location? Like, a prelude?”
“I brought you to this restaurant because of the food. Anyway, you’d be hard pressed to find pimps around here now.”
“True,” said Ward, somewhat ruefully. “The game changed. Most of the trade is online these days.”
“Get on certain internet sites, you pick out your girl. Then it’s an in-call or an out-call. You don’t have to troll the streets looking for it. It’s as easy as making a dinner reservation.”
“Police have been stinging the johns like that, though. Luring them to hotels with net ads.”
“They make some arrests that way, yeah. But they haven’t made a dent in prostitution.”
“I remember when all those Asian massage parlors were in D.C.”
“Police in the District did a good job of going after the landlords. They pretty much closed the massage parlors down. Most of the AMPs are over in Northern Virginia now.” Ornazian stabbed at a dumpling and moved it to his plate. “Hispanics have the brothels. That leaves the street trade. Logan Circle is still a hot spot, but less of one. The girls work the clubs early in the night and then move over to the hotels. Near dawn you still see some trickin on the corners. But it’s not like it was.”
“Lot of those online ads say ‘No pimps.’”
“Lotta those ads are bullshit,” said Ornazian. “There’s still plenty of pimps around. The ads say ‘No pimps’ so the johns don’t get scared away.”
“Tell me about the one you got in mind.”
“We’ll get to that. Let’s enjoy our meal. Get another dish. Try the black bean eggplant if you want to go to heaven.”
“I would, but our waiter don’t understand a word of English. Kinda hard to communicate in this joint.”
“You ever try to learn Chinese?”
“Why would I?”
“Just point to the photograph on the menu. That’s what the pics are for.”
“I shouldn’t eat any more. But okay.”
Ward raised his hand and tried to get the waiter’s attention. Ornazian texted his wife and suggested she go to sleep. He told her he’d see her in the morning.
Four
They drove out to the old residential section of Beltsville, in Maryland, and parked in a neighborhood of ramshackle, trailer-type homes on a street between Route 1 and Rhode Island Avenue. There was little activity on the block, though there were many cars and trucks, three or four to a home. Some were in mid-repair; some had been left in weeds for seasons, perhaps years. Ornazian and Ward were near a government strip of land that served as a walk-through between blocks. Like the rest of the surroundings, this too had gone untended. Trees had fallen, blocking the path.
“That’s his,” said Ornazian, nodding toward a house on the edge of the walk-through.
“With the portable carport?” said Ward. “That’s some ghetto shit right there. In a different hood, the neighbors would call the county on this mug.”
The house was a one-story affair with a side addition fronted in the formstone commonly found on dwellings in Baltimore. The original structure had asbestos shingles and a few of them had fallen off, exposing tar paper. The carport was just a corrugated cover on four poles that sat free in the driveway. There was no vehicle beneath it.
“The pimps I knew in my day had more pride,” said Ward. “I mean, they never did have much money. Spent most of it on their rides and their vines. It was all about the show.”
“It’s smarter not to show.”
“How’d you mark him?”
“I talked to a girl, goes by the name of Monique. Did her a solid once. Regular john she had had stiffed her out some money. She’d been busted a couple of times for solicitation, and she’d seen me down at the courts.”
“You found the john.”
“Wasn’t hard. She was making out-calls to this guy, always used the same hotel, one of those new boutique jobs, down near the White House? Guy always valeted his car. I slipped one of the valet dudes some cash in exchange for the plate number. From there I found his home address. Married with kids, naturally. He’s the CFO of some tech company out on Twenty-Nine.”
“You blackmailed him,” said Ward.
“He shouldn’t have stiffed my friend.”
“So this girl, Monique, she hipped you to this pimp.”
“I asked her what was happening out there. You were a cop, so you know that prostitutes are the best sources on the street. They’re up all night. They see everything.”
“Indeed.”
“Monique told me about this pimp she had for a while. Goes by Theodore.”
“That’s not a very cool name for a player.”
“But it is,” said Ornazian, who was a hobbyist in the origin of words. “It’s from the Greek. Theo is ‘god,’ and doro is ‘gift.’ God’s gift. Get it?”
“You some kind of linguist?”
Ornazian grinned. “I’m a cunning linguist.”
“Finish your story, man.”
“Theodore’s got a stable, three women at all times. If they want to leave him or if they don’t earn, he lets them go. His philosophy is, there’s plenty more where they came from. He’s no gorilla pimp. He’s not into violence. He likes to smoke weed, and so do they, but it’s not part of his plan to make them dependent on harder drugs. He looks for girls who have problems, like problems at home, with their parents, all that. He listens to them. He makes them his girlfriends. Buys them gifts. Puts them up in a decent place. And then, he’s like, ‘All these good things cost money. You gonna need to contribute, girl. Take care of my man here and help me out. And this man right here.’ Like that. He holds the money they earn. They don’t keep any of it, but he takes care of all their needs.”
“Theodore,” said Ward.
Ward had said the name with hate. It was one of the many reasons Ornazian had asked Ward to come along tonight.
“Take a nap,” said Ornazian. “He’s not coming home for another hour or so.”
“How you know?”
“I been out here three nights this week. Man’s a creature of habit, just like anyone else.”
“I mean, how you know what he’s got?”
“He’s working three women. Monique says they each earn about a thousand a night on the weekends. Put that together with what he probably keeps in the house, and it could be a nice payday. The dude makes a couple hundred thousand a year, cash. Chances are some of it’s in his crib.”
“We gonna hit him before he goes in?”
“No. That window on the right side of the house, closest to us? That’s the bathroom. Every night, he comes home, the light goes on in there and then the window steams up.”
“I get it. The man likes to shower before he retires.”
Ornazian settled into his seat. “Take a nap, Thaddeus.”
“I gotta pee.”
“There’s an empty milk jug behind your seat.”
“I can’t if you’re watching.”
“I’ll turn away.”
Ward side-glanced Ornazian. “Could you tug on it a little?”
“Only if that will shut you up.”
Around three in the morning, Theodore drove his Chrysler 300 under the cut-rate carport and killed the engine. He got out of his black Green Hornet — style sedan and walked toward his house. He was tall and very thin and wore his hair in braids. He sported a down vest over a red buffalo-check shirt, jeans with appliques on the pockets, and Timbs.